TUSTIN, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Andrew Technologies, LLC today announced that for the first time in the
history of surgery, it has safely extracted mesenteric visceral fat in
mammals, using the company’s proprietary Tissue Liquefaction Technology™
(TLT). These visceral lipectomy successes mark a positive start to the
company’s proof of concept for a procedure that has the potential to
reverse type 2 diabetes.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States.
Diabetes affects 29.1 million Americans, or 9.3% of the population, and
1.4 million Americans are newly diagnosed with diabetes each year. Some
86 million Americans aged 20 or older have prediabetes, which places
them at greater risk for developing type 2 diabetes and other health
problems. The World Health Organization describes the prevalence of
diabetes as a global epidemic.

In the fight against the epidemic of diabetes, safe removal of visceral
fat may present a new weapon. Visceral fat is metabolically active fat
that surrounds the kidneys and other organs and collects in the
mesentery (the connective tissue around the intestines), and may cause
type 2 diabetes and other diseases. There is convincing scientific
evidence that the presence of excess visceral fat is highly correlated
with a greater risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, NASH,
high blood pressure, stroke, Alzheimer’s and many other disorders. The
medical community has postulated for decades that removal of sufficient
quantities of this metabolically active visceral fat might reverse the
risk of some or all of these diseases. The mesentery contains the
largest depot of visceral fat, and may have the strongest correlation
with metabolic disease progression. However, research in this area has
been confounded because surgeons have been unable to safely remove these
fatty deposits, which contain significant blood vessels and nerves and
lie in close proximity to vital organs and structures.

Dr. Mark S. Andrew, founder and CSO of Andrew Technologies, led the
surgical team and stated, “In this study, we were able to show that
non-cutting TLT liquefies visceral fat with target tissue specificity.
Using TLT, we performed visceral lipectomy in three baboons without
damage to the abdominal organs, blood vessels or the mesenteric sheath.
This advance has exciting potential implications for future treatment of
millions of patients with type 2 diabetes.”

Dr. Derek Huffman, Assistant Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and
Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York added,
“Over the past 15 years, our research team has been particularly focused
on the role of visceral fat and its complications, particularly as it
relates to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, cancer and aging. It is
now well recognized among researchers and clinicians that visceral fat
is an important risk factor for diabetes and other diseases, but there
has been no way to safely remove it from the mesentery.”

Dr. Richard M. Peterson, Chief of Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery at UT
Health Science Center in San Antonio, TX, added, “It has been exciting
to be part of this study, which demonstrated surgical capabilities with
TLT that simply have not been available to us in the past. Following
safe removal of visceral fat, the baboons have shown no ill effects in
the recovery period, they’re doing just fine. I look forward to
exploring the technology’s capabilities further as we move through the
next stages of research.”

Andrew Technologies will continue to provide updates on its research
into using TLT for visceral lipectomy. Full results of the primate study
will be published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2017.

About Andrew Technologies, LLC

Andrew Technologies, LLC, is a privately funded medical technology
company founded in 2007 and committed to improving patients’ lives
through precision surgery based on Tissue Liquefaction Technology™. The
first device using this new approach to surgery was AquaLase, launched
by Alcon in 2003 for cataract surgery. Andrew Technologies received FDA
clearance for HydraSolve, the second TLT device, in 2012. HydraSolve is
primarily used to transfer fat for breast reconstruction following
breast cancer treatment and for aesthetic body contouring www.hydrasolve.com.
In addition to HydraSolve, Andrew has an impressive research pipeline
that includes minimally invasive surgery to correct type 2 diabetes and
adipose stem cell treatments.